


Here In The Black

by Cesare



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Verse, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Firefly References, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1756031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cesare/pseuds/Cesare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>X-Men: First Class crashes into a scene from Firefly, shared because of <a href="http://keire-ke.tumblr.com/post/88117668479/firefly-aus-are-the-best-right-black-betty-there">these sketches</a> from keire_ke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here In The Black

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keire_ke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/gifts).



"Bad news, Captain."

"Is there any other kind?" Erik parks himself behind the pilot's station, automatically scanning the starfield ahead and the readouts of their surroundings. Nothing but dust for thousands of miles. Whatever bad they have coming, it's not coming from out there. "Talk."

"I detected a signal," Hank tells him. "Someone transmitting our location."

"Tell me you scrambled it."

"Absolutely, but there's no telling how much got through." Hank shoves his glasses up the bridge of his nose, the lenses flashing with all the data streams he monitors no matter where he's looking. "I intercepted it, but I can't crack it."

" _You_ can't crack it?"

"It's Alliance encryption. If I work on it for a solid day or two and overclock the ship's computers, I might be able to decrypt it, but we can't burn the time or the energy on that and still make it to Genosha--"

"Leave it. It's already told us everything we need to know." Erik flexes his hands. "We have a mole on board."

-

Erik finds Charles Xavier right where he expected, in the cargo hold, fiddling with that big trunk of his he seems so rutting worried about. The second he turns at the sound of footsteps, Erik greets him with a punch that puts him on the ground.

"Are you out of your mind?" Xavier cries. That plush British accent doesn't sound so calm and cultured now. After a moment his hand jerks up to feel his jaw. Pale as he is, that bruise is going to show something awful. Probably clash with all the freckles, too.

"What'd you tell them?" They only have two passengers on this run, and Xavier hasn't smelled right from the start.

"Tell who?" Xavier asks, standing. He's actually brushing himself off, smoothing back his wavy brown hair and straightening his little cardigan as if a left hook that floors him is nothing but a spot of bother.

Erik puts his gun to the man's throat. Not that he needs it, but one of the things that's been pissing him off about Xavier from the start is that the man doesn't have a lick of metal on his person, nothing Erik can reach for to make his point. And without a demonstration, idiot humans never seem to understand just how deadly Erik's power over metal can be until it's too late. A gun's a faster way to put the fear in someone.

He knew this was a mistake. He knew Xavier was too clean and civilized for the outer world where he bought his passage, and if Erik weren't already maxed out on rage in all directions over the invasion of his ship, he'd be that much more angry at himself for going against his better judgement because of strong shoulders and a pretty face.

Fantastic ass, too. Gorram it.

Erik says, "I have exactly no time for games. What do they know?"

"I don't know what you're talking about! You're out of your mind!"

"And you're a fed."

"Hate to tell you, Captain, but you've got the wrong man," Darwin says from the doorway.

Erik looks behind him to see the other passenger, a bland hard-faced man who didn't stand out at all when he booked passage and came aboard. Stryker's shed all his metal too-- when did the Neanderthals catch on all of a sudden?-- and he's got a plastic and carbon fiber gun leveled at Erik. In the other hand, he activates a mutation inhibitor, bringing it closer. 

Erik's ship vanishes around him. He might as well be hanging there naked in the cold black of space. He can't feel a thing.

"Drop that firearm, Captain Lehnsherr," Stryker says.

There's nothing Erik can do but put the gun on the floor and skid it over to Stryker, his eyes trained on that inhibitor. He's a thousand times more worried about the nuller than any gun.

Stryker swivels, and takes aim at Xavier, who shuffles back, hands high.

"Charles Xavier, you are bound by law to stand down."

"What-- the doctor?" Erik stares, and shakes himself. "Fine. Take him. Solves two problems." Let these humans sort their own mess out. Unless. "Is there a reward?"

"You're making a mistake," Xavier says, still creeping backward as if there's anywhere to go.

"You can lock him in a passenger cell and hand him over at Genosha," Erik offers, stepping back as if to clear the way from Stryker to Xavier. Six foot range on most nullers, a lawman's might reach as far as nine...

"You stay right where you are, mutie," Stryker snaps. "You think I'm a complete backbirth? You're carrying a fugitive across interplanetary borders, and I don't believe for a second you're bringing medical supplies to Genosha. As far as I'm concerned, everyone on this ship is implicated."

"That has an effect on the landscape," Erik tells him grimly.

"I've got a cruiser en route for intercept, so talk all you want. We got about twenty minutes," says Stryker.

"You might have less." Even without his powers, Erik could take this man in hand-to-hand, especially now that the gun's not pointed at him. The only thing staying him is that nuller. If that thing touches him, it could suppress his powers for days. Weeks. Life.

"Don't threaten me," Stryker says, his arm twitching, and maybe Erik would find out right now just what that nuller could do to him, but Stryker can't reach him without breaking his aim on Xavier.

"Nobody do anything stupid," Darwin says. "This could still come out right for all of us."

"Except me," Xavier says sourly. "So much for safe passage."

"You brought the law on my ship, they can take you off it," Erik tells him.

"Everyone shut--" Stryker starts, but an unholy shriek drowns him out, throws him down, and staggers Erik and Xavier, though Darwin just stands by, his ears instantly growing flaps and closing up tight.

Erik tries hard not to retch. When he's swallowed his gorge down enough to speak, he glares past Darwin and down the hallway. "Cassidy! You couldn't wait til I was a little further out of range?"

"Sorry, Cap," Sean says unrepentantly, strolling into the hold. "I was trying to wait and frame just him in the doorway, but you all were taking too long to move, and I had to yell before he said 'shut up', now, didn't I?"

The second Erik regains his feet, he kicks the inhibitor out of Stryker's limp hand as hard as he can, sending it across the room. The ship reforms around him, reassuring curves of molybdenum, titanium, and steel. He breathes for the first time since he saw the filthy thing. 

"We're going to have to deal with that nuller," he says, stretching up metal shackles from the floor panels to cuff Stryker in place. "Preferably with smashing." He turns to spear Xavier with a glare. "Same goes for you, maybe on both counts. Open that trunk."

"No," Xavier says.

"You nearly got my entire crew taken in by the Alliance, put every one of us in danger, and I'm going to know the reason why." Erik puts out his hand and his own gun flies back to him, snaps against his palm, tight and familiar. He reaches toward the trunk, sensing the locking mechanisms. They're complicated, but nothing he can't handle; even the most sophisticated locks aren't made with metallokinetic mutants in mind. With a few little bends and breaks inside the locks and a series of internal clicks, Erik has the lid unlatched.

"Leave it! It's none of your business," Xavier actually tries to argue, staring down the barrel, which is when Sean pops open the trunk behind him, sending Xavier spinning around as if he's forgotten the gun completely. "No--!"

He _lunges,_ and Darwin grabs him, takes him by the arms-- not a rough hold, but absolutely unbreakable, even as desperation drives Xavier to do some impossible-looking twists.

The trunk doesn't just open; it unseals somehow, with a hiss of air and a hydraulic whoosh, thin mist drifting out. Erik lifts off the lid entirely with his power and sets it aside, revealing a figure curled up in the trunk in cryosleep.

"Uh," Sean says intelligently. At a look from Erik, he inhales to the fullest of his enhanced lung capacity, and blows the smoke away.

Revealing a naked young man, pale with freckles and wavy brown hair. Identical in every way to Charles Xavier.

"That... doesn't really clear much up at all," Darwin says.

Xavier looks from Sean to Erik, and sags a little in Darwin's grip. And then he's... changing.

It's as if the entire surface of his body is going all over spikes, but they're not coming out sharp, they're flipping over, leaving him-- a little smaller, and blue, and by the look of it, not a him at all anymore.

"You're one of us," Erik stares at her. No wonder he never felt metal. Those clothes were part of her. She seems to be naked, covered only in blue skin and scales, her slick red hair pouring back from a steep widow's peak, her eyes glittering gold. She's beautiful. 

Which is exactly what got Erik in trouble with her the first time, when he thought she was a he; he growls, "Why didn't you say you're one of us?"

"I didn't know about you til you started using your powers," she says, her accent typical spacefarer now, her voice wondering. "You're not stamped. How--?"

"I fought a war to keep that mark off our people," Erik answers. "My side may have lost, but I didn't. We didn't. Not yet."

"You were in the Brotherhood," she breathes, and there's admiration in her eyes.

"I still am." He could almost relent, but there's the man in the box to consider. Erik edges closer, looking in.

Presumably this is the actual Charles Xavier, but this version has some additions that the woman's facsimile lacked. He bears that hateful M mark over his right eyebrow. And an inhibitor collar around his neck.

Erik's rage surges up again so fast it's all he can to do keep from wrapping the gun around the woman's neck right where that collar would rest, and cinching it tight. "You're not stamped either, and you're carting around a cryo'd mutant who's not just marked, but nulled-- if you're selling out your own kind, I swear--"

"No!" she gasps, but anything else she might say dies off at the faint sound of coughing from the trunk. "Let me go," she wrestles against Darwin. Their mutations clash: she tries to change form to something that can squirm out of his arms, while he adapts as quickly as she can shift, til a sob catches in her throat. Darwin shakes his head at Erik and lets her slip away from him.

"Charles!" she cries, reaching for the man in the trunk, taking his hand. "Charles, it's okay. It's okay. I'm here."

The young man stirs, head lifting as he pulls himself up with an arm over the side of the cryochamber. "Raven?" He peers at her, and his face lights with relief. She throws her arms around him, and he clings back, shivering. "Raven... they said they had you."

"They never caught me. I'm safe. We're safe, Charles." She meets Erik's eyes, daring him to make her a liar.

That won't happen in this life. No one on this ship would let a fellow mutant come to harm. Erik shrugs out of his coat and moves to cover Charles with it.

"Thank you," Charles wraps the coat around himself and looks at Darwin, at Sean, at Erik. "Where--?"

"You're on my ship," Erik says. "Welcome to Utopia."


End file.
